Deklay's lips moved in a wolf grin. "This is a large land, and we know how to use it. The Pinda-lick-o-yi will not find us...."

"With their eyes maybe not," Travis replied. "With their machines....that is another matter."

"Machines!" Deklay spat. "Always these machines.... Is that all you can talk about? It would seem that you are bewitched by these machines, which we have not seen....

none of us!"

"It was a machine which brought you here," Buck observed. "Go you back and look upon the spaceship and remember, Deklay. The knowledge of the Pinda-lick-o-yi is greater than ours when it deals with metal and wire and things which can be made with both. Machines brought us along the road of the stars, and there is no tracker in the clan who could hope to do the same. But now I have this to ask: Does our brother have a plan?"

"Those who are Reds," Travis answered slowly, "they do not number many. But more may later come from our own world. Have you heard of such arriving?" he asked Menlik.

"Not so, but we are not told much. We live apart and no one of us goes to the ship unless he is summoned. For they have weapons to guard them, or long since they would have been dead. It is not proper for a man to eat from the pot, ride in the wind, sleep easy under the same sky with him who has slain his brother."

"They have then killed among your people?"

"They have killed," Menlik returned briefly.

Kaydessa stirred and muttered a word or two to her brother. Hulagur's head came up, and he exploded into violent speech.

"What does he say?" Deklay demanded.

The girl replied: "He speaks of our father who aided in the escape of three and so afterward was slain by the leader as a lesson to us....since he was our 'white beard,'

the Khan."

"We have taken the oath in blood....under the Wolf Head Standard....that they will also die," Menlik added. "But first we must shake them out of their ship-shell."

"That is the problem," Travis elaborated for the benefit of his clansmen. "We must get these Reds away from their protected camp....out into the open. When they now go they are covered by this 'caller' which keeps the Tatars under their control, but it has no effect on us."

"So, again I say: What is all this to us?" Deklay got to his feet. "This machine does not hunt us, and we can make our camps in this land where no Pinda-lick-o-yi can find them...."

"We are not dobe-gusndhe-he....invulnerable. Nor do we know the full range of machines they can use. It does no one well to say ' doxa-da'....this is not so....when he does not know all that lies in an enemy's wickiup."

To Travis' relief he saw agreement mirrored on Buck's face, Tsoay's, Nolan's. From the beginning he had had little hope of swaying Deklay; he could only trust that the verdict of the majority would be the accepted one. It went back to the old, old Apache institution of prestige. A nantan-chief had the go'ndi, the high power, as a gift from birth. Common men could possess horse power or cattle power; they might have the gift of acquiring wealth so they could make generous gifts....be ikadntl'izi, the wealthy ones who spoke for their family groups within the loose network of the tribe. But there was no hereditary chieftainship or even an undivided rule within a rancheria. The nagunlka-dnat'an, or war chief, often led only on the warpath and had no voice in clan matters save those dealing with a raid.